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Love Song For A City

Full Product Description

For fans of Martin Smith

This globe-trotting album is filled with live worship from around the world

These powerful new songs give Churches a renewed sense of mission and purpose

Twenty countries, two years, one album.

Love Song For a City takes Martin Smith out of his comfort zone, and into a whole new way of worshipping God. One reckless, dangerous, and unbound by expectations of how worship should sound.

After playing for Christian conferences, pleasant Churches, and being treated very nicely by all he met, Delirious? frontman and Army of Bones band leader Martin Smith felt supremely safe. He’d lost the zeal and danger of his Delirious? days. So he prayed. And that’s where it all began. A journey that would take him across the world, and lead him to create Love Song for a City.

“At first, the songs fed into the Army Of Bones project I was working on”, he explains. “I knew it was unusual for worship leaders to bare their soul with those kind of raw songs, but I felt compelled to do it. I couldn’t NOT do it.”

With his Army of Bones project, there was creative freedom. He saw people come alive as a response, and wanted Christians to find that same freedom in his worship music. In small venues where the floors grounded you to one spot if you weren’t careful, people worshipped with no rules. No restrictions. “[We] were free just to go for it. It was just a pure expression of what was inside.” Out of this spirit, songs like Jesus Only, Love Song for a City, and Come Holy Spirit were born,

Rather than keeping the songs to normal Church venues, Martin Smith opened the doors to the world.

From Australia to Argentina, from Dubai to San Diego, from East to West to North to South, Love Song for a City was recorded live in Churches and gatherings the world over. It’s an honest account of God’s heart for the places where people gather. No matter when. No matter where.

All of his is embodied in the song Leap of Faith. The “story of someone who’s just prayed the prayer ‘God I think I need more danger in my life’, it was recorded in Haarlem, Holland, and contains everything you’ve come to love in the music of Martin Smith. It’s all about letting go and letting God catch you when you fall. A cry to hold nothing back.

All part of a Love Song for a City.

Love Song For A City by Martin Smith was published by Integrity in July 2018 and is our 779th best seller. The ISBN for Love Song For A City is 0000768716021.

Publisher's Description

Love Song for a City is a brand new live album from the amazing Martin Smith recorded in several cities all around the world.

This is a stunning collection of songs that's been recorded from East to West, breathing love and life, proclaiming Jesus Only You.

It's thirty years since Martin wrote Lord You Have My Heart – a song that offered fresh air to the lungs of the church.

For the last three decades Martin Smith has continued to write songs that bring life where it is needed most; to the head and heart of worshippers all over the world. As frontman for Delirious, lead singer of Army Of Bones and a solo leader, writer and producer, Martin has been involved with almost every aspect of the new worship movement.

From Did You Feel The Mountains Tremble? to Waiting Here For You, from I Could Sing Of Your Love Forever to HistoryMaker, Martin's songs have connected with generations of worshippers.

Why I Wrote A Love Song For A City by Martin Smith

Sometimes the best stories we tell start out all wrong. That’s how it was for me and this album. Four years ago I was getting all these songs camping down in my head – songs about life, about what it means to stay married for a quarter century, about how you deal with the bumps in the road and the inevitable disappointments that life throws at you. I knew they were the wrong songs to be singing in a church on Sunday morning. But I knew they were so right as well.

I think that honesty is one of the most beautiful things we can ever come across in a person. Real honesty breathes freely. Real honesty pushes us out beyond where we’re comfortable. Real honesty bleeds. And this was exactly the kind of honesty that was driving these new songs of mine.

I knew exactly where it was coming from.

I had been spending time doing Christian conferences, travelling around the world and being treated very nicely. In the middle of it all I realised that, somewhere along the way, I’d lost a bit of danger. So I’d prayed the kind of reckless, stupid prayer that I think God absolutely adores. ‘Lord, I think I need a bit more danger in my life.’

And that’s when the songs started.

At first, the songs fed into the Army Of Bones project I was working on. I knew it was unusual for worship leaders to bare their soul with those kind of raw songs, but I felt compelled to do it. I couldn’t NOT do it.

Army Of Bones ended up playing club shows in little venues with sticky floors. One of the new songs we’d play was Love Song For A City. Singing that song over people brought me alive. The power of proximity was great, and it was such a different experience to those big church conferences. There were no rules, no ceilings, we were free just to go for it. It was just a pure expression of what was inside.

Whenever we then went to lead worship somewhere (the same Army Of Bones band) there would be more fire in our bones. Those moments of worshipping out in mainstream venues was feeding something. We’d play a bit wilder, get a bit more adventurous creatively. And I just think that the blood was flowing.

The more we played and pushed the boundaries, the more songs came. Like Jesus Only You. It’s such a beautiful, simple prayer that you can whisper when you get to my age. I’ve seen a few things, had some ups and downs, but at the end of the day, it’s Jesus, only you.

From the outside it might look like there are two parts to my life now; the darker, more Psalm-like songs of Army Of Bones, and the songs we dance to in church. In my mind, there’s no difference. It’s like Mercedes: they can make sports cars and they can make trucks. I found freedom in approaching life that way, in working with a great band that can express both sides of the same coin.

There’s a line in Jesus Only You that we repeat: ‘you will always have my heart’. That’s the pulse that resonates through the whole record.

Then there’s the song, Come Holy Spirit – the dark, brooding, secret weapon of the record. I reckon those three words are probably the most prayed prayer of the Christian faith, and they’re the most powerful three words ever put together.

I asked Bill Jonson from Bethel what songs he would write for the church if he could write, and he said he’d write about the glory of God. So I took that and put it in the song; ‘show us your glory, we’re on our knees, crying for heaven to come to earth.’

I suppose the song Leap of Faith is really the story of someone who’s just prayed the prayer ‘God I think I need more danger in my life.’ I was trying to write in a visual way, trying to capture than sense of standing on the edge of a cliff, jumping off in anticipation of the miracle that God always catches you. I like it – it’s a song about destiny and danger and on the live record we’ve got this amazing girl Holly Wroe doing a spoken word thing on it.

Two years. Twenty countries. That’s how long and how far we went to make this album. We recorded everything we were doing on the road and tried hard to capture the ways in which things were changing sonically. But there’s more to it than a musical postcard. We wanted to throw out religion and go for it, to not hold anything back.

We wanted to be honest about how God feels about our cities and towns and the people who live in them.

We wanted to open up the doors and let the music play.

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